The present invention relates generally to the field of personal communications systems, and more specifically, to the field of wireless call forwarding systems.
The wireless telephone industry has long noted that the proliferation of wireless telephones, voice mail systems, pagers, etc. has caused a great deal of confusion since callers often need to know multiple telephone numbers (i.e., office, home, wireless telephone, pager, travel destination telephone numbers, etc.) to have a good probability of contacting the user (subscriber). In addition, calls to wireless telephones are routinely missed if the wireless telephone is turned off Even if the caller is aware of other likely locations for the user, the probability of contact may still be very low in light of inherent user mobility. This results in loss of accessibility for the mobile telephone user and may negatively impact productivity, business income, family contact, etc. These are all major factors in the original decision for purchasing a wireless telephone.
One attempt to solve this problem is to have the subscriber provide to the service provider a list of alternate telephone numbers at which the user may be reached. The user would order the list in the order in which the service provider should try the numbers. Callers would only be given the one mobile telephone number. When a call is not answered by the mobile phone, the service provider would then call each of the preprogrammed numbers in succession. This solution leads to a great deal of inconvenience for the calling party since accessing all numbers in the list could take a long time. Additionally, the user may still be at places other than the locations indicated by the preprogrammed list.
A second attempt to solve this problem is based on hardware supported call forwarding. Special hardware, such as a landline residential base station in a dual mode cordless/cellular system, detects the presence of the mobile unit when within range of the special hardware (i.e., the mobile unit is at work or at home). The special hardware then notifies the wireless telephone system to forward all calls to the preprogrammed land line telephone at that location. This solution requires a large investment by the user in the special hardware, as well as system infrastructure modifications, and only works if the mobile unit is within range of the special hardware.
There is, therefore, a need in the industry for a system for addressing these and other related and unrelated problems.